


silence is what I do best

by alexanderskargard



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Call Me By Your Name AU, F/F, and they deserve slow angst so sue me, i just want to give them what they deserve, i know that, it's an au so it's base on the book, thank you
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 05:33:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18653920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexanderskargard/pseuds/alexanderskargard
Summary: Just that, simply as day and night. She had fooled herself about wanting an intellectual connection with her father’s protégée. Instead of that, she just wants skin on skin. She doesn’t want Kara’s clever answers to her father’s questions or the devious smile she gives to the maids when she tries to get more dessert.or the call me by your name au





	silence is what I do best

**Author's Note:**

> all mistakes are mine, because this is so unedited, i'm sorry.

The heat, of course, was unbearable.

The warmth alone made Lena’s skin burn and turn into a red mass as quickly as she arrives to the old mansion in Italy.

They spend 8 weeks in the Italian heat, posing as the perfect family. This summer was different, though: it was the first July that Lex didn’t come along, it was the first time their father left him in charge of LuthorCorp, the first trial to him, a challenge to seize him up.

The road is full with flowers, some of them blooming, another ones with the first signs of brown on their leaves. They travel with silence, her mother saying something here and there trying to keep appearances. Lena, however, knows the truth: Lillian Luthor wanted to stay on Metropolis with her son, she didn’t want to come to Italy, nor with her cheating husband and her adopted daughter (the one that was Lionel’s lovechild with someone else). She didn’t have another option, some magazine always made an article about their Italian holidays; if Lillian Luthor stayed on Metropolis and didn’t appear on the magazine’s cover by the September edition, people would start talking.

Appearances, everything was always reduced to what others thought of you.

 “Tell me about her” Lillian whispers.

 _Her_ meaning their guest for the next six weeks.

“A journalist” her father answers “A scientist journalist”

He sounds almost _proud_.

Taking in summer’s guests was her parents’ way of helping young academics revise a manuscript before publication. For six weeks each summer Lena had to share the house with a total stranger. Lex used to be her buffer and accomplice but he wasn’t here and the task to entertain the guest would fall solely on her shoulders. During this time, Lena used to share her bedroom with Lex but now that he was on Metropolis, she would sleep on her grandfather’s old room and their guest would occupy Lex’s room. While they were away, her grandfather’s room became a part-time toolshed, storage room and attic where rumor had it old Louis Luthor ghost still ground his teeth in his eternal sleep.

Summer residents didn’t have to pay anything, were given the full run of the house, and could basically do anything they pleased, provided they spent an hour or so a day helping Lena’s father with his correspondence and assorted paperwork. They became part of the _family_ , and after almost 20 years of doing this, the Luthors had gotten used to a shower of postcards and gift packages from people who were _now_ totally devoted their family.

At meals there were frequently two or three other guests, neighbours, sometimes colleagues, lawyers, doctors, the rich and famous who’d drop by to see Lionel’s family on their way to their own summer houses. Her father enjoyed the company, it brought him out of his usual routine: he loved nothing better than to have some precocious rising expert in a field keep the conversation going in a few languages while the hot summer sun, after a few glasses of red wine, ushered in the unavoidable afternoon torpor.

Her mother, of course, hated it.

“Her name is Kara Danvers” Lionel say, his eyes far away “She was recommend by Lex, remember?”

 _Kara,_ Lena remembers, is Clark Kent’s little cousin. Clark and Lex relationship has always been a mystery to Lena. Sometime ago she caught the mansion’s maids talking about them, speculating about the nature of their relationship.

And then, there was that time she found them in the library…

Stop.

Clark is nice and whenever he is around Lex seems to be happier.

Around midday, the house was always full of people, there was the guy that suggests going out the pool or the woman that tries to move the party to the nearest bar. Lena was eighteen, she would attend Yale next fall and, if she went her way, this would be the last summer she spends with her parents. Unlike Lex, Lena didn’t want to suffer her mother bad temper more than necessary and even though she will miss her father, Lena was sure next summer would find her anywhere but here. It wasn’t like she didn’t fit with the place, growing up with a charming brother teach her how to perform her duties as the daughter of Lionel and Lillian Luthor: she was nice with her father’s guests, trying to engaged them in conversations, often learning some things, appraising the summer’s residents and making them feel like they were welcomed every time they wanted to come back. It was exhausting but also useful for her future.

After three days there, Lena’s skin turns red and Sam starts mocking her.

“Lobster” she calls her, while they are by the pool.

Sam’s skin doesn’t turn red, of course. It becomes a beautiful and shining brown and whenever she is inside the pool, she looks like a diamond, the little drops of water making her glow.

“Shut up”

Lena wants her to disappear.

(Ok, maybe she just wants to stop feeling butterflies in her tummy when her eyes travels through Sam’s skin)

“Girls” the voice of her father brings her out of her mind and suddenly _she’s there_.

Tall, blonde and _handsome_.

“This is Kara” Lionel says but Lena already knows this.

“ _Hey_ ”

 _Hey,_ the word, the voice, the attitude.

Kara doesn’t say anything else and Lena’s blood boils in her veins. _Hey_ , it sounds harsh, curt and dismissive, spoken with the veiled indifference of people who may not care to see or hear from you again.

 _Hey_.

She’s wearing short shorts, sunglasses and, underneath her straw hat, a bun of blonde locks. Her blouse is open two bottoms and a black bra pokes through it, a clear contrast with her golden skin. _Oh no._

 _My mother’s gonna hate her_ , is the first thing she thinks.

_Oh no._

Suddenly, Kara is shaking Lena’s hand, handing her a backpack and asking about the bathroom.

“ _Boy_ , that was a long trip!” she smiles and Lena wants to cry.

 _No, no, no_.

It might have started right there and then: the blouse, the rolled-up sleeves, her ridiculous long legs, a pair of blue espadrilles and the eagerness to test the hot gravel path that led to the house, every stride already asking:

“ _Where is the beach?”_

* * *

 

Kara didn’t look like a journalist. She looks more like the cheerleader type than the bookworm. Her golden hair is often on a ponytail but when she lets it down it takes Lena’s breath away.

A fucking jock.

The universe must be laughing of her.

Just like Clark, she seems to have an aura of easiness and everyone in the house fell in her spell very fast. Lena was thoroughly intimated, in an unapproachable kind of way.

Maybe it started soon after her arrival, during one of those lunches when Kara sat next to her and it finally dawned on Lena that, despite a light tan acquired while she travelled through Italy, the color on Kara’s palms was the same as the pale, soft skin of her throat, of the bottom of her forearms, which hadn’t really been exposed to much sun (“ _I don’t go outside often, Lena,_ Kara said one time _, I love books and reading”_ ). Private, chaste, unfledged, it told Lena things about her that she never knew to ask.

 Or perhaps it started at the beach, that first day, when Kara asked her to show her around. They passed the old forged-iron metal gate as far back as the endless empty lot in the hinterland toward the abandoned train tracks that used to connect the little villages.

“I love trains” she mumbled, almost to herself “Is there any abandoned station house somewhere?” Kara asked.

“No, never” Lena simply said.

But Kara was curious about the trains: the rails seemed so narrow. So Lena was compelled to ask “Maybe you want to see them?” It was only a two-wagon train but for some strange reason, Lena wanted to please Kara. She wanted to see Kara’s smile again.

“Maybe later”

Polite indifference.

As if she guessed Lena’s desire and was trying to let her down gently.

“What do you do here, anyway?”

 _Nothing_ , Lena thought. Instead she said: “Wait for the summer to end”

“And what do you in winter, then?” Kara frowned but a smile appeared on her face: “Don’t tell me; wait for the winter to end?”

“ _Actually_ ” Lena replied, trying to hide her laughter “In the winter the place gets very grey and dark. There’s no one around, not even us. It’s practically a ghost town”

“I’ll start again” Kara’s voice was soft “What do _you_ do?”

Easy.

“Swim. I play tennis if I _have_ to. Go out in the night. Read…”

“I swim too. Maybe we could go together, early in the morning. What do you think?”

 _Yes, please_.

Lena nodded: “I could show you now. There’s a river close…”

“Maybe later” Kara snapped.

It stung. Like a bee: just a little at the beginning and then, the pain.

* * *

 

It was later that Lena realized Kara was a journalist. She was doing her tesis about science journalism. Lena had put _reading_ until last on her list, thinking that, with the vibrant, brazen attitude Kara had displayed so far, reading would figure last on hers. Lena needed to perform some clever backpedaling and let Kara know that her real interests lay right alongside hers.

And then it hit her that she already been trying – and failing – to win Kara over. When Lena did offer to take her down the town to see the 100 years old library, she should have known better than to just stand there without a comeback. Lena thought she’d bring Kara around simply by taking her up there and letting her take in the view of the town, the sea, everything.

But no:

“Maybe later”

* * *

 

Then, by the night, burning for the heat and maybe something else, Lena finally admitted it to herself: _she wants,_ specifically, _she wants Kara._

Just that, simply as day and night. She had fooled herself about wanting an intellectual connection with her father’s protégée. Instead of that, she just wants _skin on skin_. She doesn’t want Kara’s clever answers to her father’s questions or the devious smile she gives to the maids when she tries to get more dessert.

_She just wants._

At dinner the next day, Lena senses a pair of blue eyes on her while she is trying to explain _entropy_ and how it could be applied to physics taking Einstein’s formula as example. She is the youngest at the table and the least likely to be listened to, rushing words and speaking fast to compensate her light Irish accent, flustering and muffling the words.

When she finishes, some of the other men started to add their own thoughts but Lena was aware of the keenest glance coming from the left.

It was exciting and flattering at the same time – Kara likes _her_. Lena tastes the success on her mouth and after taking her sweet time, she turns and faces Kara.

_Oh._

Blue eyes has turn icy and cold – something at once hostile and vitrified that borders on cruelty.

It undoes her completely. What had Lena done to deserve this? She wants Kara to be playful and kind again, to laugh with Lena as she had done a few days earlier on the abandoned train tracks. She likes how their minds seems to travel in parallel, how they instantly infer what words the other is toying with but they don’t tell aloud.

 _Better stay away from her_.

But she is in her house and her _guest_ needs to remember that so Lena shots her a similarly wicked glance.

_Suddenly, a crinkle is on Kara’s face._

* * *

 

They don’t speak for two days.

* * *

 

Kara always exercises, even when she is sick: she’d exercises in bed if she has to. Even when she’d slept with someone new the night before, she says, she’d still head out for a jog early in the morning. She never acknowledges their distance those two days, but Lena feels like there’s something at once chilling and off-putting between them in the most unexpected moments. It’s almost like she’s doing on purpose, feeding Lena slack, and more slack, and then yanking away any semblance of friendship.

However, that icy cold gaze always returns.

She is at her father’s library, reading some poetry book when she feels Kara entering.

“What are you doing?” her voice comes from somewhere in the shadows and Lena shivers.

“ _Do forgive my daring_ ” Lena reads “ _if so I address you, unworthy though I am to be known as yours_ ”

“Who’s that?” the light by the window illuminates Kara’s face. She stands in front of her, short shorts and a crop top barely covering her.

“ _When I call you mine”_ Lena continues, her voice trembling “ _It’s not what I expect you’ll be considered such – only that I hope I_ may _be yours”_

“ _Lena_ ” Kara takes some steps and Lena stands, facing away from her.  

 _Stay away from her_. Lena has recognize the gaze right away.

“ _Lena_ ” her voice caresses Lena’s neck “Tell _me_. Who’s that?”

“ _I must admit to the crime of adoring you_ ” a pair of arms are around her and then she feels a strong chest, Kara’s breast pressing her back “ _Should you wish to punish me_ ” a moan “ _the very punishment will be reward_ ”.

“Fuck” Kara bit the words in her neck.

 _Too much, too soon_ , Lena’s mind is a cacophony of thoughts, fighting with words to answer.

Suddenly, Kara was gone.

“Don’t bother” the tremor of her voice the only evidence that something has happen “I will find it anyway”.

 _I thought you hate me_ , Lena thinks. Was it the punish line? Or the blatant way in which Lena has called herself, how she told her how Kara owned her thoughts every day and every night. What have stir a response from Kara? It is really for you, Lena wants to say, just for you.

And so it begins.

Later that day, Lena writes in her diary: _what I was trying and failing to say is that I was hoping you’d persuade me of the opposite, that you didn’t hate me, that you wanted me too – and you did, for a while. Would you be the same tomorrow morning?_

Lena has been perfectly fine to brand Kara as sunny and unapproachable and have nothing more to do with her. But now after the library, Lena feels helpless, changing her apathy for interest, trying to reach her until Kara asks her to stop just like that afternoon. Lena would never forget those shining moments, her reading and Kara unable to keep her cool.

* * *

 

It was almost like nothing has changed. They were polite with each other until that July night when the house was empty, and fire tore through Lena’s veins, because _fire_ was the first and easiest word that comes to her mind at the moment.

Kara was down in the town, with Siobhan and her brother Mike, both of them trying to attract her, trying to win her affections. But Lena knows better: knows desire and how she can’t forget _the_ afternoon at the library, waiting and waiting in her room, attached to her bed in a trancelike state of terror and anticipation. Fire like fear, like panic, like one more minute of this and she’ll die if Kara doesn’t knock the door.

She puts her only nightgown and lies on the bed, her entire body on fire. Fire like a pleading, a praying, _please please please, tell me I’m not wrong, because it’s true for you too_.

Then, her door cracks open.

“ _Oh my_ ”

Lena tries to be still, her breathing fast and her heart almost out of her chest.

“Lena?” _drunk_ , of couse, Kara wouldn’t dare any other way “Are you awake?”

She doesn’t answers even though she is dying to say that she is indeed awake, tasting this moment when Kara has come, hearing her prayers, being here with her. Kara only needed to ask and she’ll say yes.

Kara, however, doesn’t move. She stays at the foot of the bed, thinking, thinking.

After a moment of hesitation, Lena feels a hand on her cheek, a warm hand, feverish, caressing her face.

“Lena” Kara says.

Yes, yes, yes.

And then she is gone.

**Author's Note:**

> Poem by Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (My divine Lysi)  
> come yell at me at jonathanngroff.tumblr.com


End file.
